The Spanish Civil War was one of the pivotal events of the 1930’s, the moment when fascism and socialism came into open conflict. First published in 1939, The Spanish Tragedy recounts the experiences of Jef Last. Activist, poet and novelist, Last might have been the archetypal Republican volunteer but his experience left him even more disenchanted than most. Critical of Soviet Communism, a court martial loyal to Moscow tried to sentence him to death and he was forced to flee to Sc...

At the height of the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell served from 1936-1937 as a private for the POUM, the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification, an anti-Stalinist communist party. Seriously wounded in action and betrayed by the Communist Party, Orwell and his wife, Eileen, narrowly escaped arrest and returned to England in early summer 1937. Homage to Catalonia is Orwell’s moving account of his experiences during this period, capturing both his commitment to socialist ideals and ...

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are.Whether puncturing the lies of politicians, wittily d...

"A vivid and unforgettable word picture of the destruction of Nazi Germany" ( The New York Times).A radio broadcaster and journalist for Edward R. Murrow at CBS, William L. Shirer was new to the world of broadcast journalism when he began keeping a diary while on assignment in Europe during the 1930s. It was in 1940, when he was still virtually unknown, that Shirer wondered whether his eyewitness account of the collapse of the world around Nazi Germany cou...

Friedrich Reck might seem an unlikely rebel against Nazism. Not just a conservative but a rock-ribbed reactionary, he played the part of a landed gentleman, deplored democracy, and rejected the modern world outright. To Reck the Nazis were ruthless revolutionaries in Gothic drag, and helpless as he was to counter the spell they had cast on the German people, he felt compelled to record the corruptions of their rule. The result is less a diary than a sequence of stark and astonishing snapsh...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. A sweeping history of the Spanish Civil War, told through a dozen characters, including Hemingway and George Orwell: A tale of idealism, heartbreaking suffering, and a noble cause that failed.For three crucial years in the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War dominated headlines in America and around the world, as volunteers flooded to Spain to help its democratic government fight off a fascist uprising led by Francisco Franco and aided by Hitler and Mussolini....

A first hand account of life with Hitler by a survivor of The Night of the Long Knives this important and often overlooked volume was originally published as" I Knew Hitler" by Kurt Ludecke in 1938. The book was out of print for 75 years prior to the appearance of this new Illustrated Edition .Edited and introduced by Emmy Award Winning writer Bob Carruthers " I Knew Hitler" the illustrated edition provides the missing link in the literary trail which traces the fortune...

The definitive work on the Spanish Civil War, a classic of modern historical scholarship and a masterful narrative.Paul Preston is the world's foremost historian of Spain. This surging history recounts the struggles of the 1936 war in which more than 3,000 Americans took up arms. Tracking the emergence of Francisco Franco's brutal (and, ultimately, extraordinarily durable) fascist dictatorship, Preston assesses the ways in which the Spanish Civil War presaged the Second World War t...

Account Rendered: A Dossier on my Former Self by Melita Maschmann (translated from the German by Geoffrey Strachan, with a new introduction and an afterword by Marianne Schweitzer Burkenroad with Helen Epstein; 98,000 words, 10 photographs)Account Rendered was first published in Germany in 1963 as Fazit: Kein Rechtfertigungsversuch or Account Rendered: No attempt at justification. Maschmann wrote to Hannah Arendt that her intent in writin...

Including Homage to Catalonia'Spain not only defined Orwell as an individual, it also gave him his first glimpse of totalitarianism' D. J. Taylor, GuardianGeorge Orwell's experience of the Spanish Civil War had a transformative effect on his life and work. This volume brings together his complete writings on the war, including Homage to Catalonia, his searing memoir of fighting in the conflict and the bitter betrayal that followed...

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Since My Life was first published it has been regarded as a unique political, literary and human document. Written in the first year of Trotsky's exile in Turkey, it contains the earliest authoritative account of the rise of Stalinism and the expulsion of the Left Opposition, who heroically fought for the ideas and traditions of Lenin.Trotsky's exile is the culmination of a narrative which moves from his childhood, his education in the "universities" of Tsarist prisons, Siberia and...